Tag: folk rock

665. Joan Baez

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(August 2025) Episode 665 is JOAN BAEZ. For too long I shunned her as a stereotype of the shrill, humorless, righteous folk singer. And while that’s not entirely untrue, the mistake is mine. Getting to know her work has been a pleasure. I especially like her in her early 60s prime with just her guitar and her voice. She did broaden out to include a band and other styles in a six-decade recording career, some of it weak but plenty good. Inseparable from her music and her life is the commitment to social justice and peace, which was the event setting of the one time I saw her in person. She was a vital figure in the 1960s folk revival, and is still speaking up as an activist, and deserves a listen I was too late in giving her.

Favorite album: Joan Baez (1960)

Favorite song: Birmingham Sunday

Compared to expectations: ↑

Recommendation: The six, mostly eponymously-named albums between 1960 and 1965.

635. Chad & Jeremy

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(February 2025) Episode 635 is CHAD & JEREMY. Coincident with the first wave of the British Invasion, Chad Stuart and Jeremy Clyde offered light-pop/folk rock songs. “Yesterday’s Gone” puts them in the Merseybeat mode, while their most famous piece, “A Summer Song,” is in the vein of Simon and Garfunkel and the Everly Brothers. This approach characterized their 1963-66 recordings, which is fine, but put them out of step with the emergent R&B bands. Chad & Jeremy regrouped with 2 ½ psychedelic albums, a sound that I personally favor, although not it’s representative of what they were known for.

Favourite album: The Ark

Favourite song: A Summer Song  

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: Albums: A best-of is fine. But those who dig 60s psychedelia should check out their baroque-pop stylings on Of Cabbages and Kings and The Ark.

627. Fairport Convention

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(January 2025) Episode 627 is FAIRPORT CONVENTION, the best known popularizers of British folk-rock. Their first album has a groovy West Coast 60s sound (which suits my taste the best). Sandy Denny* joined for the second album and helped move them in a folk direction. The early albums feature a combination of interpretations of traditional British folk songs, covers of America folk artists (Dylan, Mitchell) and original material, reaching the apotheosis of British folk-rock with Liege & Leaf. The first four albums are excellent and the next couple of albums have some interesting bits, but to me the quality declines precipitously after Richard Thompson left in 1971. Lineup changes were constant. Fairport Convention is still around with three members dating from the 60s. But what was once innovation becomes cliché (a dynamic afflicting other genres, notably 70s electronic music devolving to New Age). With Denny, their folk had a mystic quality; later albums merely sounded like something you’d hear in a pub.

Favourite album: Fairport Convention

Best album: Unhalfbricking

Favourite song: A Sailor’s Life

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: The first four albums (Fairport Convention to Liege & Leaf) are excellent and all you need here.

* classic rock fans will recognize her as the female voice on Led Zeppelin’s “The Battle of Evermore”

624. Judy Collins

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(December 2024)  Episode 624 is JUDY COLLINS, who is still performing and recording in a career that has spanned seven decades. She got her start in the Greenwich folk scene. Her initial recordings featured traditional folk songs, then those by Dylan, Ochs, Seeger, et al, then broadening to the Beatles, Cohen, Newman, Mitchell. This was her peak period, where her clear, direct voice provided interesting interpretations of famous songs. Over the years her recordings branched out into pop, rock, country, showtunes and standards. But to me, after a while her voice doesn’t add anything. It’s not flat but also not dynamic. Gets boring.

Favorite album: In My Life   

Favorite song: Both Sides Now

Compared to expectations: ↓

Recommendation: Albums from the 60s, particularly In My Life and Wildflowers

599. Arlo Guthrie

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(September 2024) Episode 599 is ARLO GUTHRIE. I read one review that characterized him as a three-time one-hit wonder (“Alice’s Restaurant Massacree,” “Coming into Los Angeles,” “City of New Orleans”), which is both apt and unfair. It’s always a challenge for an artist with a famous last name, and with a voice not unlike Dylan, Arlo Guthrie can never avoid comparisons to the greats. He deserves renown for his own long recording and performing career. But taken as a whole, his songs are Berkshires-based roots music, the basic fare of countless PBS specials, but not so distinctive. I think he would be more enjoyable in concert than on record. He does carry on his father’s social/political themes.

Favorite album: Hobo’s Lullaby

Favorite song: City of New Orleans

Favorite song (original composition): Alice’s Restaurant Massacree

Best late-period album: Mystic Journey

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: a best-of is enough

542. Cat Stevens / Yusuf

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(January 2024) Episode 542 is CAT STEVENS, who has also recorded as YUSUF ISLAM and YUSUF.  I detect four phases of his career. 1967-71: He started out in folky pop before transitioning to singer-songwriter mode with gentle songs and sweet melodies. This era produced his most popular tunes and is also his best. 1972-78: Stevens broadened into pop with more orchestration, but also lost the charm of his peak period. 1995-2004: After his conversion to Islam and two decades away from the recording studio, he made some recordings of religious content. 2006-present: As Yusuf, he returned to secular music and a return to his original form with pleasant results albeit with a time-worn voice (also credit to the guru of comebacks, Rick Rubin).

Favourite album: Teaser and the Firecat

Favourite song: Wild World

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: You can make do with a greatest hits of his first period. But for an interesting diversion, try some albums from the recent decade, like Tell ‘Em I’m Gone.

532. Phil Ochs

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(November 2023) Episode 532 is PHIL OCHS, the best folk musician of the 1960s you’ve probably never heard of. He got his start and made his initial recordings with protest songs in the mode of Seeger and Guthrie – direct, unambiguous, political. Songs like “I Ain’t Marching Any More,” “Here’s to the State of Mississippi” and “Draft Dodger Rag” brought him attention and scorn. In later recordings, Ochs widened his style into folk rock and even some country before personal demons ended his career and then his life. Fair or not, he is unavoidably compared to Dylan. Ochs sang with more clarity and a better voice, but by comparison he lacks Dylan’s poetic abstractions and lyrical magic.

Favorite album: Live at Newport

Favorite song: Remember Me

Compared to expectations: ↑

Recommendation: The protest songs do come off as period pieces, but sadly many seem relevant today (see: Remember Me). He is worth checking out for his melodicism.

526. The Youngbloods

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Episode 526 is THE YOUNGBLOODS. You’ll recognize them from the hippie anthem “Get Together.” They are labeled a folk-rock band, staying on the lighter side of the counterculture-era musical spectrum, akin to the Lovin’ Spoonful, the Association and country-ish Byrds. They recorded five albums from 1967-1972. The music is fine, but to me it never coalesces into a musical identity.

Favorite album: The Youngbloods

Favorite song: Get Together

Compared to expectations: ↓

Recommendation: It’s OK to take a pass.

500. Gordon Lightfoot

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(June 2023) Episode 500 is GORDON LIGHTFOOT. Begun after his passing, I entered this episode without knowing his work other than the five songs* that were staples on soft rock stations. He’s a national hero of Canada, and his long recording history affirms why.  While the famous songs were all from his more pop-oriented singer/songwriter period in the 1970s, I prefer the more conventional folk approach of his 1960s albums. Strong voice, gentle guitar, good themes. One hidden gem is “Solo,” his aptly-named spare last album (2020).

Favorite album: The Way I Feel

Favorite song: Long Thin Dawn

Compared to expectations: ↑

Recommendation: I realize I should have paid more attention to his catalogue, so I recommend you do too

* “If You Could Red My Mind,” “Sundown,” “Carefree Highway,” “Rainy Day People,” “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald“

496. Violent Femmes

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Episode 496 is the VIOLENT FEMMES. Their first album is the soundtrack to my college dorm years, providing drunken sing-alongs for students trying to get real-life affirmative answers to the questions in “Add It Up.” The Femmes were alt music a decade before we started using that term. They’re labeled folk-punk but I’d call it geeky neo-skiffle. There’s a clear resonance with Jonathan Richman, but I hear parallels with They Might Be Giants (and a bit of Talking Heads, not surprising given their association with Jerry Harrison). I stopped following them after the second album and expected a drop-off from there, so I was pleased to find out they generally kept it fresh and fun over the decades.

Favourite album: Violent Femmes

Favourite song: Add It Up

Special sauce: the bass work of Brian Ritchie

Compared to expectations: ↑

Recommendation: The first album is essential, especially for those of us of a certain generation, but it’s worth exploring other stuff too.